Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #623693Re: The birth of BASIC
From: Andrew Swallow
Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2018 12:38
Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2018 12:38
37 lines
3683 bytes
3683 bytes
On 03/06/2018 17:13, J. Clarke wrote: > On Sun, 3 Jun 2018 16:53:10 +0100, Andrew Swallow > <am.sw...@btinternet.com> wrote: > >> On 03/06/2018 16:24, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote: >>> On 03/06/2018 15:02, Andrew Swallow wrote: >>>> On 02/06/2018 20:11, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >>>>> On Saturday, June 2, 2018 at 12:19:34 PM UTC-4, Andrew Swallow wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> The writers of BASIC obviously knew FORTRAN. They chose GOTOs over >>>>>> blocks. >>>>> >>>>> BASIC had GOSUB. Some BASIC's had CHAIN. >>>>> >>>> >>>> GOSUB is a CALL statement without parameters. Although GOSUB is >>>> recursive. However having to implement variables as arrays shows how >>>> inelegant actually recursion is. >>> >>> Recursion is a technique favoured by those qualified in computer >>> science but never used by programmers in the real practical world. >>> >> >> Recursion is useful when you have a variable number of loops. With a >> fixed number of loops the programmer codes them in and uses iteration. >> So the real life applications of recursion are when processing computer >> languages and bill of materials (BOM). > > If it's a variable number of loops you just specify the number of > loops in a variable. > > Where recursion helps is when you don't know at the time you start the > process how many branches there are going to be. > A variable may contain the number of times you loop but rarely the number of FOR statements active
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X-Received: by 2002:a1c:640b:: with SMTP id y11-v6mr1539757wmb.13.1528115934619; Mon, 04 Jun 2018 05:38:54 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 2002:adf:98f6:: with SMTP id w109-v6ls14841204wrb.2.gmail; Mon, 04 Jun 2018 05:38:53 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:adf:fa07:: with SMTP id m7-v6mr167878wrr.29.1528115933860; Mon, 04 Jun 2018 05:38:53 -0700 (PDT) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!d26-v6ni25014wmb.0!nntp.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!news.mixmin.net!border2.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2018 07:38:52 -0500 Subject: Re: The birth of BASIC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <pep9gi$ssu$1@dont-email.me> <877enj7cme.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <2111hdh5qbjo4o6ot3n9cuqfgk1pqdn8ck@4ax.com> <86ad7a17-fbd3-4056-98aa-91e1b38932ce@googlegroups.com> <1778842547.549582573.514335.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <-8-dnaDqYe0JXo_GnZ2dnUU78bmdnZ2d@giganews.com> <68034291-0143-4693-b8fe-755df7f87322@googlegroups.com> <PcqdnYC22cafaI7GnZ2dnUU78S3NnZ2d@giganews.com> <pf1188$q8f$3@dont-email.me> <APydnYdsnPR4k4nGnZ2dnUU78LXNnZ2d@giganews.com> <4s48hddv6f1np9mj38oakl0s5sfr1kpdnj@4ax.com> From: Andrew Swallow <am.sw...@btinternet.com> Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2018 13:38:55 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4s48hddv6f1np9mj38oakl0s5sfr1kpdnj@4ax.com> Message-ID: <RtednQHa3_pAr4jGnZ2dnUU78W9j4p2d@giganews.com> Lines: 37 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-CqxMIPKjK7yXTC+6yJogHMGrxIamJXfI5mIHY63h4Ute/vtoLX4URGQASWN1oST34x0YgE0lbDSiG6t!mjOs4wphAGXhB92QRyX6pZvMv5S9uX/yCPgAmd02bo2cg7z7cvf/h5boGrr3ZdxBy9LRXQVxBac= X-Complaints-To: ab...@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3171 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit